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^ERSITY OF ILLINOIS BULUETIN 

Issued Weekly 



MAY 6, 1918 



No. 36 



•econd-class matter December 11, 1912, at the poii office at Urbani. Illinois, under the Aet 

- -i2.) 



of August 24. 1912.) 



WHAT THE UNITED STATES HAS ACHIEVED IN 

WAR ACTIVITIES AND MORAL LEADERSHIP 



BY 



EDMUND JANES JAMES 
President of the University 




published by the university 
Under the Direction of the War Committee 

URBANA 



WHAT THE UNITED STATES HAS ACHIEVED IN 
WAR ACTIVITIES AND MORAL LEADERSHIP* 

Friends, Colleagues and Students: j^O 

We arc gathered here this afternoon, not so much to review 
what we have done or failed to do in the Great War during the p»st 
year, as to dedicate ourselves anew to the great enterprise that we 
have undertaken. 

In spite of all that has been said during the year in which we 
have been at war with the Central Powers of Europe, sustaining 
and helping our hard-pressed and courageous Allies, it does not 
seem to me that the average American citizen even yet realizes 
what a fundamental world issue is involved; how great is our pri- 
vilege in being permitted to enter this conflict actively and on the 
right side; how important a turning point in the history of the world 
the outcome of this war may be; and how fortunate we are in having 
a president, who has seized the opportunity to convert what to a 
narrow observer seemed a mere struggle for additional territory 
and additional material resources into a great issue in the progress 
of human freedom. 

When Louis XVI called together the Estates General in the 
year 1789 to take counsel as to the state of the kingdom, a struggle 
arose between the king and the representatives of the various orders, 
which might easily have remained a mere local incident in the life 
of a single nation. But the genius of the French people converted 
it into a great crusade for liberty, equality, and fraternity, out ot 
which grew that mighty convulsion, called simply "The Revol- 
ution," so fundamental in its characteristics and results, so sweep- 
ing in its wide-spread ^influence, that all previous human history 
seemed a mere preparation for it and all subsequent history a mere 
outcome of it; all previous lines of development seeming to con- 
verge toward it and all subsequent lines of progress to spring out 
of it. 

The present war at first was regarded by some as a mere con- 
test on the part of great nations for more territory and a larger 
population and greater wealth. It was natural to judge from pre- 
vious human experiences that smaller powers standing in the way 

*Abitr«ct of «n addresi by the President of the University »t the general convocation held April 
8, 1918, in honor of the first anniversar) ot ihe entiancr of America into the Great War, April 6, 1917. 



D- of D. 
UN 5 1918 



of the waves of this furious struggle for national supremacy would 
be swept away, devastated, ruined, utterly effaced perhaps, — and 
that all this would happen as so inevitably a result of the conflict 
of great powers that while much sympathy might be felt or even 
expressed, the only active result would be a shrugging of the shoul- 
ders and an "ala«! alas! Such is life. Such is the fate of the small 
man! and the small nation!" 

And then the conduct of the Central Powers became such that 
even those Americans who did not appreciate or care for a moral 
role among the nations for the Great Republics, saw themselves 
constrained to force action in order to defend our national inde- 
pendence, nay, our national existence. 

Even then the issue might have been narrowed and might have 
been formulated as a selfish one, affecting ourselves alone or the par- 
ticular desires of national units, such as the securing to Italy of 
the territory it desired at the expense of Austria, or the giving to 
Russia of the right to determine the eastern boundaries of Ger- 
many, while to France and England should be given a similar pri- 
vilege as to the western boundaries, and the assignment to Eng- 
land of the German Colonies — a kind of dispute in which the Ameri- 
can people could have little personal interest except so far as it 
safeguarded or threatened our power or security. 

With one noble and sweeping gesture President Wilson wiped 
out all these items on the slate of world division and organization 
and wrote down as our goal the safeguarding of human liberty 
throughout the earth: to all people — not merely to ourselves — ■ 
to the small as well as to the great — to the weak as to the strong — 
the assurance that they may order their own lives as freemen. 

This is a program to which we may all subscribe, for which 
we Americans may all toil and suffer and sacrifice and if need be, 
die, because we believe that human liberty is the foundation stone 
of all human progress. 

Now the great thing which President Wilson has done is to 
make this program of his the program of the United States, the 
program of the Allies, — nay, the program of the world; for even 
the Central Powers have been compelled to adopt the same slogan 
— even the Kaiser is emphasizing that he has gone into Russia not 
for his own sake but to free its people. We have not been misled. 



of course, by this statement, for we know the kind of freedom that 
the lion brings to the lamb, — a freedom, it is true, from responsi- 
bility, a freedom from independence, from self-determination, a 
freedom from freedom with all its toil and trouble and sacrifice, — 
but at the same time a freedom from all the joys and ecstacies of 
self-development and progress which freedom permits. 

Never before in human history have so many nations lined 
up consciously for the great end of establishing the right of all to 
live, and also their bounden duty to let live, and for this end we 
have to thank the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. 
Let us stand by him until this end is achieved! 

There is another side from which our participation in this war 
may bring to us satisfaction and hope. The advantage of victory 
in this great war, friends, will not redound merely to the Pole, 
the Bohemian, the Slovak, the Serb, but also, and in no less degree, 
to the subjects of other governments, fighting not on the side of 
the Central Powers but on the side of the Allies, — on our side. 

We Americans can not in good conscience and with self-respect 
line up for freedom and fair treatment for the Pole and Serbian 
without forming a new and more potent resolution that the negro, 
the Porto Rican, the Filipino shall have no reasonable cause of 
complaint under our government. We can not insist that the 
German Government shall secure political rights to the common 
man without resolving anew that the ordinary civil rights shall 
be secured to all our citizens alike, no matter what their color or 
race or previous condition of servitude; without determining that 
mobs and lynching parties shall have an end throughout the broad 
territory subject to the jurisdiction of the Republic. 

I do not mean to say that all these things are going to happen 
immediately upon the conclusion of peace, but I do maintain that 
they are all involved in a complete and sweeping victory by the 
Allies over the Central Powers. 

A chapter out of our own history, which we ought never to for- 
get, will help us to understand what will be possible if we only keep 
our eyes on the stars. 

On the fourth of July, 1776, a representative body of American 
colonists announced to the world a thesis for the defense of which 
they pledged their lives and fortunes and sacred honor. This thesis 



/ 



was that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by the 
Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness. 

None of these men found it particularly inconsistent with the 
above thesis to hold human slaves in a peculiarly debasing form of 
bondage known as African slavery. Such a practice was, of course, 
not consistent with the profession given above, and when this pro- 
fession was once made, so great is the power of the winged word 
that the practice had to cease in time or the profession had to 
be renounced. That profession was not, alas! the statement of a 
fact in existence at that time, but a prophecy of something to 
come; and one of those peculiar prophecies, — thank God, — the 
mere formulation of which helps to their realization. 

It behooves us Americans, who have entered this great contest 
for human liberty, to remember how easily such a conflict may de- 
generate and how necessary it is to hold it on a high plane, worthy 
of our aspiration and our sacrifice. We ought not to forget that the 
price of liberty is still eternal vigilance, watching not merely over our 
enemies, but over ourselves, our desires, our ambitions, our conduct. 

In spite of that magnificent announcement in the Declaration 
of Independence, which sounded a new note in the history of the 
world, leading directly to the French Revolution and all its conse- 
quences, it was nearly ninety years before we in this country were 
willing to draw the logical conclusion and to take the decisive step 
in our own policy so imperatively called for by the sentiments and 
language of this declaration. Eighty-five years after the Declar- 
ation of Independence was given to the world, calling forth senti- 
ments and aspirations that seemed to have died out in the world's 
breast, a considerable proportion of the intelligent, liberty-loving, 
warm-hearted American citizens pledged their lives and fortunes and 
sacred honor to a war in defense of this same institution of African 
slavery. And it was not until they were thoroughly defeated, until 
a million precious lives had been sacrificed, uncounted billions of 
money had been destroyed, that they finally acquiesced in an out- 
come of the Civil War, which was nothing but the logical develop- 
ment of the Declaration which their ancestors had adopted, and 
to which they had pledged their support and enthusiasm for near- 



ly'a century. With the close of the American Civil War, the Declar- 
ation of Independence began to have a new meaning for us, although 
it is far from being realized fully yet. 

This war and our relation to it will put a new and larger meaning 
into this great Declaration of which every American should be proud 
and which every American should be determined to help realize to 
the fullest possible extent. We shall come to understand more fully 
than we do now that the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness are not mere negative rights but positive rights calling not 
merely for inaction, but for positive policies on the part of society 
that they may be fully realized. Thus the time shall be hastened 
when no man who is able and willing to labor shall suffer for lack of 
work; when to every one willing to do his share the means for living 
a decent human life shall be secured; when economic and industrial 
liberty, shall be recognized as essential elements in that civil liberty 
chiefly contemplated in the Declaration. 

Toward all this a decisive and early victory over Germany and 
her allies will be greatly conducive. 

We ask you all to enlist in this war and for the duration of this 
war in the trenches, in the factories, in the shipyards, on land and 
on the sea, in your own homes — wherever you are and whatever else 
you may be doing — all the time helping to create that atmosphere 
which will insure success. 

I have been asked to say one word, and my time limits do not 
permit more, about what our country has already accomplished dur- 
ing this first year of the war toward the winning of it. 

First of all I wish to say in a very positive way that I think our 
achievements in this direction have been truly remarkable and are 
fully comparable with the best done by other nations working under 
anything like similar conditions, and I think our Government de- 
serves the respect and confidence of the American people. 

Of course we have made mistakes — many of them and shall 
doubtless make many more — costly, bitter mistakes, owing pardy 
to that cockiness which is so characteristic of all us Americans; 
partly owing to our ignorance; partly to our inefficiency in making 
war to which this generation is practically strange, for our Spanish 
war was not a war at all; partly to our love of individuality which 
makes co-operation difficult; partly to our ingrained partiality for 
competition instead of combination, etc., etc. 

6 



In spite of all this, we hare adopted a system lor recruiting our 
armies far superior to anything we ever had before. It has been 
inaugurated without difficulty and with little trouble, and with the 
full consent as well as the enthusiastic support of the American peo- 
ple. It is the most democratic plan we have ever employed and with 
a few changes will rank with the best schemes ever adopted for this 
purpose, viz: recruiting the armies of a free State and providing for 
their maintenance in man power and equipment. 

We have called a large number of men to the standards and are 
training them for the various branches of military and naval service 
under, on the whole, very satisfactory conditions, though there have 
been some egregious mistakes , calculated to make us blush for Ameri- 
can inefficiency. Instances of gross inability, however, to handle 
difficult situations are becoming less numerous as our organization 
is improved. 

Again, we have raised a different kind of army from any army 
hitherto produced in the history of mankind, — an army of which we 
shall be increasingly proud as the months go on and from the training 
of which our country will derive an advantage long after the war is 
over. 

We have begun to build and launch ships and from all present 
indications we shall soon be turning out an increasing tonnage. We 
were not a nation of shipbuilders and it takes time to train men and 
get material. We are manufacturing munitions and guns faster 
than we can get them to the front, and there is no reason to suppose 
that we shall break down at any time in this work. 

Our aircraft program has from various causes failed to meet our 
reasonable expectations. The full causes have not yet been made 
public but it looks now as if the whole movement were going into a 
new era and we shall speed up in this department also. 

We have been successful in our war finance. All our enter- 
prises have turned out well. Our taxes have yielded all that was 
expected of them. Our loans have been over-subscribed, and the 
Red Cross, Y. M. C.A., and Knights of Columbus campaigns, fruit- 
ful beyond our expectations. 

We have been able to meet all our bills and lend in addition 
large sums to our Allies to help them in their straits. 

Above all and finally and most important of all, we have begun 
to send troops to the firing line. 

7 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



V 



\ 



We have already done very subs 018 465 828 8 ^ ^o 

meet the submarine danger and thus nelp Keep the ocean sate tor 
the transport of troops and supplies. 

We have sent, nobody outside the War Department knows 
really how many, troops to France and England, but my guess is 
over one-half million. No information has as yet been given out 
as to how many troops are actually on the firing line. 

But one great fact stands out in which we may take profound 
comfort in spite of regret that we have not done more, viz: that be- 
fore the close of the first year after the declaration of war, a con- 
siderable number of American soldiers were actually engaged by the 
side of our English and French comrades in defending the battle line 
of freedom on the bloodstained fields of France. Coming to their 
aid from every part of this country are long lines of railway trains 
filled to their limits with American boys — great steamers are send- 
ing them by the tens of thousands to the training camps in France. 
Guns, amunition, supplies of all sorts make almost continuous mov- 
ing lines from the great forests of Washington, Oregon, and the mines 
of California, Nevada, Arizona, and the wheatfields and stockranges 
of the whole North American Continent — ever on! ever on to the 
trenches of France and Belgium! 

What does it all mean? What can it mean except victory for 
our Allies? The Germans may take Amiens; they may take Paris; 
they may take Calais; but the more they take the more they will 
ultimately have to disgorge. The further they drive forward, the 
longer the way back. The greater their temporary victory, the 
more crushing their final defeat. 

The stars in their courses are fighting for us and our cause, and 
if only we are true to the high ideals we have adopted, and show our- 
selves worthy of our ancestry — in energy, in perseverance, in skill, 
and in devotion — the victory, an overwhelming victory will be ours. 

A victory for us means victory for the forces of righteousness 
and of progress; protection for the small nation and the small man, 
for women and children. It means LIBERTY and FREEDOM 
for all! 



Ho! 



